Internet, Apps & Now Hardware

Web designers, software developers, and non-engineering professionals with no prior experience in designing a system are turning their attention to hardware, Marvell's Kinoma vice president says.

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Beware, hardware is back in vogue. Web designers, software developers, and non-engineering professionals with no prior experience in designing a system are turning their attention to hardware, according to Peter Hoddie, Marvell's Kinoma vice president.

Everyone knows how the Internet changed the design engineering world. Hoddie tells us that was the first wave. It profoundly affected the way engineers think about the user experience, software, and system designs. Then the mobile wave hit, sucking every developer's energy into mobile apps, even for a system design. If anyone was developing a system without mobile apps, well, forget about it.

"Now, I see the next wave emerging," he said. "It's hardware."

Peter Hoddie, Marvell's Kinoma vice president.

Hoddie, who developed QuickTime at Apple, now heads the Kinoma team at with Marvell. In a brief chat during EE Live! this week, he talked about how hardware is triggering the next revolution. He was referring to the industrywide movement revolving around Raspberry Pi, BeagleBone, PCduino, and other development boards -- including Kinoma Create.

Those who might be domain experts but have no hardware engineering experience are getting eager to ride the hardware wave, especially in the context of the Internet of Things. "While some of these developers are making the leap, many more are looking on curiously from the sidelines, wanting to give it a try."

Marvell's Kinoma team, who came to the EE Live! show and demonstrated the Kinoma Create module at Microchip's booth, is pitching its newly designed JavaScript-powered IoT construction kit. According to its Indiegogo page, the kit includes:

A QVGA capacitive touch screen

An 800 MHz Marvell Aspen system-on-a-chip)

WiFi (802.11b/g/n) and Bluetooth wireless connectivity

USB 2.0, including USB On-The-Go

128 MB RAM, 16 MB SPI Flash

A microSD slot

A speaker and microphone

Wired (USB) and wireless (with optional battery) power options

Digital input/output (20-36 GPIO, configurable)

Analog input (0-16, configurable)

I2C (one physical bus and two soft buses)

UART (one physical bus and two soft buses)

PWM (3)

Inside look at Kinoma Create.(Source: Marvell)

The company said that no breadboard is required for many breakout board-based sensors, and there is custom, lightweight Linux distribution to support the Kinoma platform.

The Kinoma Create mission is to simplify the hardware and software experience, "so more developers jump in and begin to make, create, and tinker with hardware," Hoddie said.

Creating superstars
As the Indiegogo crowdfunding deadline draws near (the campaign will close in two weeks), Marvell has sold more than 400 kits thus far. That's a small number when viewed through traditional semiconductor business practices, where big IC suppliers like Marvell have always striven to sell their ICs to marquee brands in big volume. But the Kinoma team's move illustrates big changes happening in the way chip vendors do business.

The team hopes to create a new way to reach small and midsized companies. It also hopes to build a community around Kinoma Create developers. Hiring 500 field application engineers to support those who buy Kinoma Create was hardly a methodology preferred by Hoodie's group.

Since customers are ordering Kinoma Create for $100-$150 with their credit cards, "we now know who those people are," he said. "That alone is a big shift" in building relationships with customers. "But, of course, that's hardly enough."

Between now and September, when Kinoma Create is scheduled to start shipping, the Kinoma team hopes to ensure enough documentation, sample projects, and example applications for Kinoma Create users to dive into. Being told to "create anything" may seem liberating, but in reality, many people find it incredibly tough, and they often get stuck. "But when we show them a sample project, they often come back with a response like 'I would do it this way.'"

The team's goal is "to create superstars out of those who are getting Kinoma Create," Hoddie said. "If they need certain sensors, for example, we'd pre-build it for them."

The Kinoma Create module (left) comes with a host of sensorsready to get connected.

There is no proven model in the semiconductor industry for pulling off a project like this (selling a construction kit to individuals and turning the results into real commercial products), but the process might be similar to building a software developer community.

"That's something I learned when we developed QuickTime at Apple," Hoddie said. "We worked with a small group of designers very closely. Together, we validated technology and developed business opportunities."

@LarryM99 Perhaps my favorite kind of coding is optimization, so I respect both the hard work and clever solutions of embedded programmers. Getting the very most out of hardware is incredibly valuable, especially as the product stabilizes and the volumes grow. But, that takes time. For prototypes and perhaps even the early product revisions, it can be better to focus on usability and reliability to create a product lots of people want. Our hope is that Kinoma Create will become another tool along that journey, especially at start.

The culture of embedded systems development is built around doing the most with the least "wasted" resources. The hard part about this transition is that it violates that religion. By definition rapid prototyping requires more CPU / RAM / storage than a tailored, efficient system. The hurdle to get over is that that matters much less than it used to. When the price and power increments between low and high end were 100X or more than it was worth optimizing COGS by expending NRE (and therefore time-to-market). When the differences are practically nonexistent then it makes no sense at all.

@LarryM99 I think you are right on the mark with your comment about turning out "useful products at warp speed." From our expeirenece, rapid prototyping of ideas is essential. It allows creators to test those ideas quickly with real users, refine the ideas, and try again (and again). That iterative process is critical because few ideas are great the first time. The tools developers use to realize those ideas - both hardware and software - either help or hinder the process. We choose help. )

@MeasurementBlues Kinoma Create has places to explore for engineers of all skiill levels. With Kinoma Create, we focused on providing an accessible on-ramp for engineers who have been watching from the sidelines. At its heart Kinoma Create is a Linux device, so there's plenty of opportunity to play at that level while still integrating with the higher-level JavaScript software. Someone has to build the "parts" that get integrated at the script level.

I have been watching this trend in the hobbyist community for a while now, and it really makes sense to try to package it a bit more cleanly. The building blocks are there, with downright cheap and small processing boards are an amazing array of sensors. There are a number of companies that are sitting in comfortable product niches that will soon find their devices challenged by a new generation of garage startups based on these highly-integrated components. Those of us that have been doing it for a long time may turn up our noses at this new generation of "script kiddies", but they will turn out useful products at warp speed.